Cleo. What I am for, is not the Question. Priests who would bear an absolute Sway over the Laity, and live luxuriously at their Cost, ought First to make them believe Implicitly: Whereas an honest Clergy, that will teach Nothing concerning Religion, but what is consistent with good Sense, and becoming a rational Creature to believe, ought to deal uprightly with Men throughout the Whole, and not impose upon their Understandings in one Point more than they do in another. From the real Incomprehensibility of God, just Arguments must be drawn for believing of Mysteries that surpass our Capacities. But when a Man has good Reason to suspect, that he who instructed him in these Mysteries, does not believe them himself, it must stagger and obstruct his Faith, tho' he had no Scruples before, and the Things he had been made to believe, are no Ways clashing with his Reason. It is not difficult for a Protestant Divine to make a Man of Sense see the many Absurdities that are taught by the Church of Rome, the little Claim which Popes can lay to Infallibility, and the Priestcraft there is in what they say of purgatory and all that belongs to it. But to persuade him likewise, that the Gospel requires no Self-denial, nor any Thing that is irksome to Nature, and that the Generality of the Clergy of _England_ are sincerely endeavouring, in their Lives and Doctrine, to imitate the Apostles, as nearly as Human Frailty will let them, and is consistent with the Difference of the Age and Manners between their Time and ours; to persuade, I say, a Man of Sense, that these Things are likewise true, would not be so easy a Task. By a Man of Sense, I mean a Man likewise of some Knowledge, who, in the First Place, has read the Bible, and believes the Scripture to be the sole Rule of Faith; and, in the Second, is no Stranger to our Church, or any Thing that is openly to be seen relating to her Clergy, especially the Heads of them, the Bishops; such as their Palaces and Manner of Living; their Translations, Revenues and Earthly Power, together with the Worldly Honours, Precedency and other Privileges, which our Spiritual Lords insist upon to be their Due. Hor. I have often laugh'd my Self at Apostles in Coaches and Six; but what must at that Rate the Men of Sense and Sincerity among the _Roman Catholicks_ think of their Prelates, who live in much greater Splendour and Luxury than ours? What must they think of the Cardinals and the Pope himself? Cleo. Think of them? What they please, so they dare not to open their Lips against them, or any Thing which the Clergy are pleas'd to call Sacred. In all _Roman Catholick_ Countries, you know, no Books or Pamphlets may be publish'd, but what are Licensed; and no Man is allow'd to divulge any Sentiments concerning Religion, that are not entirely Orthodox; which in all Countries, so regulated, is a vast Ease and an unspeakable Comfort to the Clergy of the establish'd Church.